


Common Ground

by regenderate



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-10
Updated: 2019-01-10
Packaged: 2019-10-07 16:58:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,315
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17369855
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/regenderate/pseuds/regenderate
Summary: Rose has been living her life in the parallel universe for months. Everything is perfectly boring until a strange stone statue zaps her back to the 1950's and she meets an eccentric woman who's building a time machine in the back room of a dress shop.(Rose meets the parallel universe version of the Doctor.)





	Common Ground

Rose Tyler had had a hell of a day.

First of all, she had almost died. And not even an interesting death, either; not like the time she had absorbed the Time Vortex, or almost been blown up by Slitheen. She faced deadly situations on the regular, almost died at least once a month, but that wasn’t what had happened this time. No, today she had almost died trying to change a lightbulb in her flat before work. She had forgotten to turn off the light first, and so when she had gone to change it she had accidentally gotten a finger caught in the socket, which had resulted in an electric shock that knocked her off the chair on which she stood.

Not only that, but as had she sat up, a little dazed, she realized she could feel her heart beating with just a little more strength than she was used to. She wrote it off as adrenaline and reached into her pocket for her phone, intending to call 999, but suddenly she paused with her thumb hovering over the nine button. 

Adrenaline could increase a heart rate, but it didn’t double each beat.

Rose took a deep breath, and then she pressed her hands to her sternum. 

Two heartbeats met her touch. 

And so then she had given up on calling an ambulance and gotten her mum to drive her to Torchwood instead, where she got the medical staff to run test after test to confirm what she already knew: that somehow, she had become a Time Lord. 

And now everyone was bustling around her, trying to figure out how this had happened, how it was possible, and Rose just wanted to go back to work.

“I told you,” she said to one of the scientists, who was at that moment taking her pulses. “I looked into the heart of a Time Lord’s TARDIS a year or so ago.”

“Well, then, why didn’t you know  _ then _ ?” the scientist asked, putting a blood pressure cuff around Rose’s arm.

“I don’t know,” Rose said, looking critically at the cuff. “Must’ve happened when I shocked myself. Started the heart or whatever. Can I go back to work now? You know they’ve just intercepted a transmission from the Slitheen over in alien relations, and they need all the knowledge they can get.”

“Not quite yet,” the scientist told her. “We’d like to take some of your blood, if that’s all right.”

“Yeah, fine, take it all for all I care,” Rose said, rolling her eyes and holding out an arm. “Just leave some for me to use, yeah? I’ve got to deal with--”

“The Slitheen transmission, we know,” the scientist said, as another came forward with a needle. “But, Ms. Tyler, you have to understand, this has  _ never  _ happened before.”

“Yeah, I know,” Rose said, impatient. “I’m impossible. Life goes on.”

Eventually, Rose got an alien relations person in to talk to her while the medical staff continued to test every part of her. There was no threat, it turned out; just a passing spaceship. Life went on. 

Life went on, except now she had two hearts, and the medical department wanted to test her blood once a week, and she didn’t sleep as much, and suddenly her head was spinning with a whole bunch of new information. The Doctor had once told her he could feel the Earth spinning, and she thought she understood, now. It wasn’t that she could feel it with her existing senses; rather, it felt like she had developed whole new senses, a whole new knowledge of where she was in space and time. 

So this was what it was to be a Time Lord.

Except Rose was stuck on Earth. She couldn’t lord over time; she could barely even pay her rent. With every passing day, she itched more and more to be among the stars, rocketing around through space and time, but she couldn’t manage it. She and the others at Torchwood were working on this thing that they were calling a dimension cannon, but the science was fiddly and the cannon was unlikely to ever work. Rose was all right with the whole mad scientist thing, but she missed being a  _ traveler _ . She missed the days when she and the Doctor would go from planet to planet, the past to the future, looking for beauty and adventures and new kinds of people.

But here she was, plodding along, living a human life. There was beauty in it, she supposed. She tried so very hard to recognize the beauty, even when she was bored by it.

Still. It was months before anything more interesting than the Slitheen transmission came across Rose’s desk. Every day, part of her wished she could jump ahead to the good part, but still, life went on-- she went out with new friends from work, she had tea with her mum, she rode the bus to Torchwood every day and kept on trying to make a dimension cannon work. She was just beginning to resign herself to the fact that this was her life for the foreseeable future when things started to change.

It was little things at first. The alien relations division of Torchwood started intercepting more and more messages. They got more and more reports of alien technology. The conspiracy theory side of the Internet got just a little bit more active. 

Rose didn’t let herself get her hopes up. She longed for real alien contact, a chance to get out, maybe, but she didn’t want to get excited only to be disappointed. And there was a part of her that could never forget that alien contact so often meant conflict, and that part of her was worried that if what she desired came to pass, good people might get hurt. 

She didn’t let herself get her hopes up, but all the same, she made sure Torchwood was prepared. She made sure everyone checked and double checked their translation algorithms, their teleports, their satellites. She felt a sort of electricity in the air: everyone was waiting. And no one quite knew what for.

She never found out.

It was another mundane coincidence, the day things changed for Rose. Just like forgetting to turn the lights off before she changed the lightbulb. She was just walking to work one morning, just like any other morning, when she saw something strange out of the corner of her eye. Something that hadn’t been there before.

She knew the route to work pretty well, she thought, even if she had come from a different London. She knew were things were, and where things weren’t. Specifically, she knew that there was no winged statue in front of the used bookstore she sometimes popped into on her way home.

She crossed the street and doubled back to take a closer look. The statue looked like regular stone. She glanced around her at the near-deserted street and pulled out a scanner she had built-- it was no sonic screwdriver, but it  _ was  _ good enough to decode the composition of most objects. Holding the scanner at her side, trying not to call attention to herself, she pointed it at the statue.

It was made of stone. 

She shook her head. She was being paranoid. There was nothing wrong with a bookstore deciding to put a statue by their door. Not everything new meant anything, she reminded herself. 

Still. It was worth going in to ask about it, maybe. 

Rose turned away from the statue, intending to walk into the shop. She didn’t even take a step before she felt a hand on her shoulder from behind, and then suddenly it felt like the whole world was shifting beneath her feet. She stumbled, and for a moment, she felt completely unrooted in time. 

A moment later, or perhaps decades earlier, she regained her footing and realized that the bookstore (and the angel) was gone, replaced by a dress shop. It was midday now, the sun shining right over her head, and crowds were swirling around her: men in suits and women in smart dresses with pleated skirts and high heels. Rose looked down at herself, in the short-sleeved button-down and dark jeans she usually wore to work, and realized she was completely out of place.

Well. Good thing there was a dress shop. 

She ducked inside, looking around for hints as to the year. She could tell, from her brand new sense of time, that she was in the relatively recent past, and still in the same place she had left, but she couldn’t quantify that. The dress shop was laid out almost exactly like the bookstore, with a counter by the door and mannequins instead of shelves. A bell rang as Rose entered, and as the door swung shut, a voice came from the back of the shop.

“I’ll be with you in a second!”

The voice had a strong northern accent, Rose noticed, not entirely out of place in a city like London, but strange nonetheless. There was a noise just a little like an explosion, which would have felt more out of place if Rose  _ hadn’t  _ been someone who had made a career out of working with alien technology, and then footsteps running towards her.

The woman in front of her was decidedly out of place. Not just in this store, and this time period; Rose thought she would probably look just a little out of place in any time period. She was wearing a red T-shirt with long sleeves under and braces over, and oversized navy blue pants cropped halfway up her calves. To her credit as a dressmaker, at least, they were very well-tailored navy blue pants.

“Oh,” Rose said. “Did the statue get you, too?”

“Oh, I was  _ so _ hoping it had moved on,” the woman said. “Sitting out in front of that bookshop like no one was looking.” 

“So that’s a yes, then,” Rose said. Despite herself, she felt a smile prickling at the corners of her mouth; she had missed this sort of adventure. 

“Yes,” the woman said. “When are you from?”

“When are  _ you _ from?” Rose countered.

The woman narrowed her eyes. “I asked first.”

“Fair enough. It was the fifteenth of June, 2007. Morning, if that matters.”

“It might,” the woman said. “I must have gotten zapped a few hours before you. Wonder why I came back further.”

“So you do work here?” Rose asked.

“For now,” the woman said. “I’ve been trying to build a time machine in the back room. Should only take another week or two. Don’t tell the owner.”

So that explained the explosion.

“Where’s the owner?” Rose asked.

“Oh, she only comes in after three,” the woman said. “Does all her sewing at home. Which is why the back’s open for me to build a time machine. There’s hardly any room in my flat for me, let alone the sort of thing I’m trying to create.”

“Where’d you learn how to do that?” Rose asked.

“A little here, a little there.” The woman shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. I don’t think I got your name.”

“Well, you didn’t ask,” Rose said. She smiled. “It’s Rose. Rose Tyler.”

“Rose Tyler,” the woman said. “Brilliant. I’m Penny Smith.”

Rose smiled, thinking about the last person she’d known who’d traveled in time and gone by Smith. 

“Good name,” she said.

“Thanks,” the woman said. “I made it myself.”

“Had a friend who used to do that,” Rose said. “A while back. I’ve always been Rose myself.”

“Well, it’s because you had a brilliant name to start with,” Penny said. 

“Thanks.” Rose smiled. “So what can you tell me about that statue?”

“It’s an alien organism,” Penny said. 

“No surprise there,” Rose murmured.

Penny looked at her curiously, but she kept talking.

“It’s stone while it’s being observed, but the minute you look away, the minute you  _ blink _ , it zaps you away into the past and feeds off the energy of the life you would’ve had.”

“Like electrons in reverse, yeah?” Rose said.

“What?”

“Like how the minute you observe electrons, they’re in another place,” Rose explained. “The minute you  _ don’t _ observe the statues, they move.” She shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s just the first thought I had.”

Penny’s mouth was hanging open.

“Who  _ are _ you, Rose Tyler?” she asked.

“I work for Torchwood,” Rose explained. “Do you know Torchwood?”

“Heard of ‘em,” Penny said. “What is it that you do, again?”

“Anything to do with aliens,” Rose said. “We’ve got people working on alien technology, communication, alien relations, you know, diplomacy and all that. We’re working on some pretty major technological advances. And we try to stay peaceful, of course.”

“You’re not military, though, are you?” Penny asked.

“Nah,” Rose said. “Don’t think they’d take me in the military. I barely exist.”

“What’s that mean?”

Rose paused, trying to figure out how to explain. 

“I sort of-- lost a lot of my documents a while ago,” she said. “Had to get it all back. Not that it matters now. I suppose if I wind up stuck here too long I’ll need new new documents.” 

“I am going to do everything in my power not to let that happen,” Penny said. “You wouldn’t happen to know anything about chronon energy.”

“Some,” Rose admitted. “Not a lot. We really have to work with what we find at Torchwood.” She paused. “And, well, I used to have a friend who did some time travel. Traveled with him for a while.”

“Oh, really?” Penny asked, with genuine interest. “Who?”

Rose shook her head.

“You wouldn’t know him,” she said. “It’s complicated.”

“Time travel,” Penny said. “Always complicated.”

“You’re telling me,” Rose said.

“Why haven’t I met you before, Rose Tyler?” Penny asked.

Rose shrugged.

“I’m new here,” she said. 

“Well, it’s a good thing you are,” Penny said, “because I’d been getting a bit lonely. Do you want to see my time machine?”

“All right, then,” Rose said, following Penny into the back room. Any notion of finding clothes more appropriate to the time period was completely forgotten.

The time machine was impressive. Penny had wired together all sorts of materials; the room was lined with mirrors; there was a screenless, tinfoil covered, television in the middle of the room; and something Rose thought might be umbrella spokes hung down from the ceiling. She explained the function of each in an almost reverent tone while Rose looked inside the hole where the television screen had been (there was a clock and a potato inside) and inspected each mirror.

“And the best part,” Penny finished, “is it doubles as a fitting room, as long as I remember to put a mannequin over the television.”

“It’s brilliant,” Rose said. “Back at Torchwood, we’re trying to build-- well, it’s a long story. It’s sort of like this, though. It’s taking us ages.”

“Well, maybe I can take a look at it when we get back,” Penny said. 

“Maybe,” Rose said. Somehow, she didn’t think Penny would be entirely on board with the idea of traveling between dimensions. She reminded Rose a little too much of the Doctor. “If I buy a dress from you,” she said, “can I use money from the future?”

“Not technically,” Penny said. “I’ll buy it. You can pay me back later, if you like. Or not. Really, I don’t have much use for money, most of the time. I travel a lot.”

“I can give you money from 2007,” Rose said. “Really, I should be keeping some old currency on hand for moments like this. Won’t make that mistake again.”

“Do you get zapped to the past often?” Penny asked.

“Not lately,” Rose admitted. “Still. Always good to be prepared, yeah?”

And so began Rose’s first time travel adventure in the parallel universe. As adventures went, it was fairly boring, but at least it wasn’t anything life-threatening, and at least she had company. Penny helped her get hired as a secretary in a nearby office building, which was a step up from shop girl as far as Rose was concerned, but several steps down from Director of Operations at Torchwood. She even let Rose live with her, despite the fact that her flat was tiny-- “It’s not like we’re planning on being here long-term,” she said, “and anyway, it’s not like I sleep all that much.”

Not that Rose slept all that much, either. 

Penny’s flat was a mess-- Rose asked her what she was going to do with all the books and food and other clutter she had lying around when she went back into the future, but Penny just shrugged and said, “Might come back for it, I suppose.” 

Rose didn’t argue. She want to risk it.

Because she was almost one hundred percent convinced that Penny was a Time Lord. She hadn’t even known whether Time Lords  _ existed _ in this universe-- she had thought not, but now all of the evidence sat right in front of her, often literally: an excitable time traveler with a large amount of alien and mechanical knowledge who didn’t need much sleep or change her eclectic fashion choices based on time period or location. Penny reminded Rose almost painfully of the Doctor, actually.

Which was why she didn’t press the issue. If Penny wanted Rose to know who she really was, she’d say so, and for the time being, Rose would just live with the mystery. (She wasn’t letting herself admit that there was a part of her that didn’t want to know who Penny was-- a part of her that wanted to pretend that she had the Doctor back. Even if that wasn’t fair to Penny, who was a person in her own right.)

So Rose just went to work every day and back to the flat every night. She formed a habit of stopping in at the dress shop at lunch to check on Penny’s progress with the time machine, and Penny started popping in at Rose’s job at various times during the day.

“Do you just come in here whenever you get bored?” Rose asked one day, very aware of her coworkers’ eyes on her. Rose had told her coworkers that she and Penny were roommates, but, with Penny having come in multiple times a day under the guise of borrowing a pencil, she knew a couple of them had started to form their own opinions. And as much as Rose liked to consider herself an ally, she didn’t really fancy being the victim of a 1950’s hate crime.

“Pretty much, yeah,” Penny said, leaning on Rose’s desk. “To be fair, your job is  _ riveting _ .”

“Not really,” Rose said. “Mostly just taking phone calls.” She shrugged. “I’ve had worse.”

“Well, we should be out of here soon,” Penny said. “And then we can get rid of that angel.”

“How’re we supposed to do that?” Rose asked.

“Oh,” Penny said. “I don’t know. I figured we’d figure out how to immobilize it. Guess that won’t work, though. Maybe zap it back in time, see how  _ it  _ likes it.”

“Torchwood might be able to help,” Rose said, thinking about the technology they were using for the dimension cannon. It could probably zap an angel back in time. Or maybe freeze it. 

“Great,” Penny said. “You think about that, I’ll think about the time machine, hopefully between the two of us we can achieve all of our goals.”

Rose smiled.

“Yeah, okay,” she said. She held out a pencil. “It’s going to look suspicious if you’re here much longer.”

“All right, I can take a hint,” Penny said. She took the pencil.

“And I’m almost out of pencils,” Rose said.

“I’ll give them back,” Penny protested.

Rose didn’t answer, and Penny turned and walked out the door, her long coat flapping. Rose went back to her typewriter. 

Two days later, Penny came into Rose’s office halfway through the morning, her hair a mess, no coat, braces falling off her shoulders, and Rose didn’t need to ask what was going on. She pulled her own coat on, wrote a note--  _ if I’m not back by lunch, hire a new secretary--  _ and practically jumped over her desk.

“You got it working?” she asked Penny, running after her down the street.

“Think so!” Penny cried, grabbing Rose’s hand. Together, they raced into the dress shop, past a very confused shopper, and into the back room. Little had changed since Rose had last been in-- there were now wires connecting the top of the tinfoil-covered television to the umbrella spokes on the ceiling, and a tiny crystal was suspended between the ceiling and the television.

“I just had to find the crystal,” Penny explained, pulling on her coat. “Once I had that, everything sort of fell together. It’s charged full of chronon energy, got that from the space where you showed up, so thanks for that, and I’ve set the clock to take us right back to 2007. You ready?”

Rose grinned.

“Absolutely,” she said.

Penny reached into her coat. 

“Here we go,” she said, and she pulled something metallic out of her pocket. She pointed it at the television with a flourish. It glowed orange, and--

That sound. Rose  _ knew _ that sound. 

She barely had half a second to process that before her world dissolved into white.

A moment later, boxes and boxes of books materialized around her, a wood floor appeared beneath her feet, and Penny was in front of her, pointing her sonic screwdriver at nothing.

Rose swallowed, trying to gather herself. She tucked a piece of hair behind her ear.

“Is that, um, is that sonic?” she asked, gesturing vaguely at Penny’s device.

“Oh, yeah,” Penny said, doing an extra scan of the area. “It’s my screwdriver. Although it’s gotten pretty far removed from a screwdriver, properly speaking.”

“I’ll say,” Rose said. Something-- some mix of sadness and hope and anxiety-- swelled in her chest, settling right in between her two hearts. “So, I guess we have to take care of the statue now, yeah?”

“Oh, it’s not out there anymore,” Penny said. “Screwdriver picked it up. Don’t know where it’s gone. I should probably track it down, though. Want to come?”

Rose bit her lip. She shouldn’t be in Penny’s timeline. It was too big of a risk-- getting involved with a Time Lord’s timeline in a universe parallel to her own, especially when her own timeline was so complicated. 

And yet-- this was Rose’s first chance, maybe her only chance, for an adventure. 

“Yeah, all right,” she said. “Mind if we take a moment so I can call my mum?”

“‘Course,” Penny said. “Probably should do it outside, though. While we walk?”

“Works for me,” Rose said. She dialed the number as she and Penny walked out of the bookshop. Her mum’s voice came over the other end of the line.

“Bit early to be calling,” she said. “Everything all right?”

Rose almost laughed. So it was the same day she had left. She had thought so, but it was nice to have it confirmed.

“Yeah, all good,” she said. “Had a bit of an adventure, though. I might not be around for a while.”

“Is this about that dimension cannon of yours?” her mum asked, her voice deafening even over the phone. “Did you get it working? Can I come with you?”

“No,” Rose said. “It’s not that. I met someone. Um-- not romantically, of course. But there’s a new alien, and she knows about it, and we’re going to investigate.”

“Oh, I’m sure you are,” her mum said. “Investigating everything. Well, just come back safe, all right?”

“Of course I will, Mum,” Rose said. “Always have. Remember, I’m not-- I’m not the same anymore, either.”

“I know,” her mum said. “But even Time Lords have to have mums and dads, right?”

“I’m not sure about that, actually,” Rose said.

“Well, you do,” her mum said. “So come back safe.”

“Talk to you later,” Rose said.

“Bye, love!”

Rose flipped her phone shut.

“So,” she said to Penny. “Where’re we going?”

“Parked my ship just up here,” Penny said, gesturing. “Oh, I haven’t told you about my ship! I think you’ll love it.”

With that, she rounded a corner, and quickened her pace to keep up with Penny.

And then she stopped dead in her tracks.

Sitting in the alley, white light glowing on top, was a blue police public call box. 

She closed her eyes, then opened them. The box was still there. 

Part of her, deep down, had known that this was going to happen. Penny hadn’t just been like the Doctor; she hadn’t just been someone Rose thought might be a Time Lord; she was the Doctor. She was this universe’s version of the Doctor. And Rose hadn’t wanted to admit it to herself because this made everything complicated. She hadn’t pressed for Penny’s real name. She hadn’t asked if Penny was a Time Lord. She had just enjoyed her first foray out of 21st century Earth in this universe as if it wasn’t going to cause any problems or bring up any complicated emotions later.

“Rose?” Penny asked, already at the door of the box. “You coming?”

“I shouldn’t be here,” Rose said. 

Penny took a few steps back towards Rose, her head tilted, her eyebrows drawn together.

“Sorry?” she asked.

“I just-- it’s complicated,” Rose said. “Sorry. I just shouldn’t be here.”

“Why not?”

Rose shook her head.

“Sorry,” she said again. “I don’t know how I’d even begin to explain it.”

“Well, do you want to come inside my ship?” Penny asked. 

“What’s your real name?” Rose replied. 

“Sorry?”

“Your name,” Rose repeated. “It’s not Penny Smith, is it? Sorry, it’s just-- my friend, who I used to travel with-- he used to go by fake names, too.”

Something about Penny’s face changed at that-- her features settled into a more serious expression. 

“I’m not Penny Smith,” she admitted. “I’m the Doctor.”

Rose nodded, and then she made a choice.

“I’m really Rose Tyler,” she said, with a little bit of a smile. “Promise.”

Penny-- the Doctor-- gave her a massive grin.

“Well, Rose Tyler? You coming?”

Rose followed her into the blue box. 

She had thought that going into the TARDIS, even this parallel universe TARDIS, would feel old, like coming home, but the inside had changed. It was different. Gorgeous, with its hexagons and crystals and soft golden light, but different.

“It’s changed,” Rose murmured, before she could remind herself not to. 

“Sorry?” the Doctor asked.

Rose shook her head.

“Nothing,” she said. “Just-- thought it’d be a bit different, is all. Gorgeous, though.”

“You’re not going to do the bigger on the inside bit?” the Doctor persisted.

Rose wanted to cry. She laughed instead.

“Sorry, Doctor,” she said. “Bigger on the inside isn’t exactly news.” She walked up to the console and absently twirled a dial. “Hey, this thing does scans, right? Biological scans?”

“Careful!” the Doctor exclaimed. “You could pop us into the Lava Seas of Gel’ax. Hard coming back from lava seas.”

“It’s all right,” Rose said, inspecting the console. “Scans?”

“Yeah,” the Doctor said. “Don’t use them all that often.”

Rose turned around.

“Scan me,” she said.

“Why?”

“Just-- scan me,” Rose said. “I can’t-- there are things about me I can’t explain. It’ll be easier if you scan me first.”

To Rose’s relief, the Doctor shrugged and approached the console, pressing a few buttons and flipping two switches. 

“Just a moment,” she said. “Results’ll come up over there.”

Rose turned to see a blue glow on a hexagonal screen. Circular Gallifreyan popped up, spinning across, but it didn’t mean anything to her. But then a scan of her body appeared in gold, two hearts shining clearly through.

The Doctor turned away from the console to look.

“ _ How? _ ” she asked. “I don’t understand. You can’t be a Time Lord. There’s none left.”

“That’s the thing,” Rose said. “I’m from a parallel universe.”

“Oh!” the Doctor exclaimed, pressing her hand to her forehead. “I knew I felt something come through. Cardiff, right? Last year?”

“Yeah, actually,” Rose said. “The first time.”

“So are you missing your TARDIS?” the Doctor asked. “Do you need help getting it back? Was that your real mum on the phone?”

“I don’t have a TARDIS,” Rose said. “I wish. I mean, I love a good TARDIS. And yeah, that was my mum. I wasn’t always Time Lord. I’ve actually only been this way a few months. Looked into the heart of a TARDIS a little over a year ago, and didn’t find the second heart until I was too far away from my universe to do anything about it.” She shrugged. “Good thing I found you.”

“Suppose so,” the Doctor said. “Whose TARDIS were you in?”

Rose paused, weighing her options as to what to say next. 

“That’s the thing,” she said, finally. “I think it was a parallel universe version of you.”

There was a moment of dead silence. 

“Which me?” the Doctor asked. “You said he before, when you mentioned your time traveler friend. So it wasn’t this me. Was it the scarf? Bowtie? Buzz cut?”

“Er, buzz cut, I think,” Rose said. “And then-- brown hair, pinstriped suit?”

“Oh, you got the worst one,” the Doctor said. “Is that why you’re here? Knew there was something better out there?”

Rose shook her head.

“I lost him,” she said, her voice empty. “Or, he lost me.”

“Torchwood,” the Doctor said, understanding dawning on her face. “That was the day the Cybermen disappeared.”

Rose nodded.

“We sucked them all into the void,” she explained. “Except one of the levers we were using to open it broke, and I had to let go of our anchors so I could pull it back up. Almost got sucked in.”

“That’s what you were building at Torchwood,” the Doctor said, her voice sounding like a revelation. “Something to get back to him.”

Rose nodded.

“I miss him,” she admitted. “I miss him, and-- and I’ll probably never see him again.” And that was the first time she had thought that. Before, she had held on the whole time to the idea that the dimension cannon was going to work, she was going to be vaulted back into her own universe, probably directly into the Doctor’s arms-- she had never let herself think that her life would have any other outcome. But now she was thinking it-- and then she was crying, just sobbing on the floor of the TARDIS, with the Doctor crouched next to her, her eyes searching Rose’s face.

“Sorry,” Rose said. “I didn’t-- you don’t know me. It’s not fair if I put all this on you.”

“Oi, we’re friends,” the Doctor said. “We lived together. I don’t mind helping you.”

Rose smiled. 

“Thanks,” she said. “You know, first time I saw the TARDIS, I started crying just like this? Thought my boyfriend was dead, to be fair.” She wiped her eyes and stood up. The Doctor followed. “So, do you travel with anyone?”

“Not just now,” the Doctor said, her attention on the TARDIS console. “Had some people for a while, but-- well, they’re gone now.”

“Yeah,” Rose said. “Happens.”

The Doctor looked up, and Rose saw the loneliness in her eyes. She realized-- this Doctor didn’t know her, and she didn’t know this Doctor, but the two of them had something in common. Maybe Rose could make this work.

“Well, then,” the Doctor said. “Don’t suppose you still want to capture that Angel?”

Rose gave her a sort of wobbly smile.

“Yeah,” she said. 

“Brilliant,” the Doctor said, and she slammed a lever down. Rose heard the groaning, wheezing sound of the engines starting up and almost started crying again. It sounded just like home.


End file.
